Artistry Permits and Custom May Ordain - Northwestern University

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community shared a complex interdependency with the royalty. 245 Examples of such
tenuous power-balancing relationships can be drawn from most of the city-states on the
coast, but the Sofalan case is noteworthy since the town’s commercial economy was
expanding at the turn of the sixteenth century and immense amounts of wealth were
passing through the region. At Sofala, merchandise from across the Indian Ocean region
was traded for gold, ivory, and other commercially valuable items. The traders who
frequented Sofala, while almost wholly Swahili, 246 came from virtually every Swahili town.
De Freitas noted that the cloth came to Sofala “by the Moors of Mombasa, Malindi, [and]
Pate, since all of them trade in Cambay.” 247
The ritual of exchange reveals much about the dynamics of authority and the political
leverage available to ungwana and royal lineages. Trade relations between external
merchants and the Sofalan community were superficially negotiated through the office of
the sultan, who could thus maintain a balance of power in the region. Indeed, the sultan
was often called upon to mediate interior disputes. 248 Caravans entering Sofala from the
interior were greeted by the sultan; yet it was the local merchants who entertained caravan
leaders, granted them accommodation, and carried out the business of exchange. 249 Thus
accumulations of interior goods were negotiated through the ungwana with little official
regulation.
The poetics of power negotiation were played out in a highly symbolic drama in the
coastal trade. Any merchant arriving at Sofala by sea was obligated to approach the sultan,
and, as recorded for exchange relations at Mozambique and Sofala, when traders met with
the ruler, each one had to take “a present with him in accordance with a custom that no
stranger should appear before the ruler without bringing him something.” 250 After
speaking with the potential trading partner, the sultan conferred with his advisors—the
ungwana. If his advisors agreed to allow the new trader access to Sofala’s market, a gold
245 Cattle was recorded as a royal prerogative in Mwali. R. Cocks explained that the Sultan acted as the sole
distributor of cattle because he “had been to Mecca and knew the value of silver.” “R. Cocks to Sir Thomas
Smith, Bantam, 12 January 1612,” in Letters Received by the East India Company. Vol. 1. Ed. Danvers. London,
1896. 213-4.
246 An exception to this is the merchant from Fez to whom Vasco da Gama’s western Sudanese interpreter, Fernão
Martins, spoke in Mozambique. Records. 6:177.
247 “Informação de Jordão de Freitas para el-Rei, Goa, 1530 Setembro 17,” DPMAC. 3:425. De Freitas obtained
most of his information from Swahili merchants in Malindi and Mombasa.
248 In their attempt to wrest the interior trade from Swahili merchants, the Portuguese were often frustrated by the
fact that the Sultans of Kilwa and Sofala were so often necessary for the mediation of disputes between interior
kingdoms. “Diogo de Alcaçova.”
249 Dos Santos, Ethiopia Oriental, 1:105-9.
250 G. Correa, Lendas da India, in Records. 2:26.